The IT of Love

As Infant,

IT was simple.

Touch.

Smell.

Taste.

See and hear.

Soft was soft.

Smiles were smiles.

Kisses were kisses.

As Child,

IT was…different.

Am I cared for?

Am I really liked?

Am I loved…really?

As Adolescent,

IT was…Hell.

If I do this well, will I be--?

Why did they invent mirrors, anyway?

Why don’t I love even myself?

Will I ever find IT?

As adult,

IT was…a disaster.

I knew what IT was,

Why didn’t they?

I knew what IT needed,

Why couldn’t I find more?

I learned IT was all misread,

Why didn’t others?

As a Being,

I’m listening to petals open.

I’m seeing noise made quiet.

I’m smelling transcendent breezes.

I’m tasting fragrances awakened.

I’m touching the infant within.

What if IT just is,

Sans definition

For its own sake?

Consider 

The who and what of love

In a world where marriage convention

affords little emotional purchase,

and commitment outside the institution weighs heavy

on the traditional.

Panicked love brokers of halo driven missteps

mount their marbled pedestals of self-deceit

and preach their continuum for tried and proven failure

to those of vacuous preference.

Who might they be

these carnivorous angels of imagination,

these habitual slight-of-hand love merchants

in three-piece suits

and vestments of supernatural protection,

whose power of persuasion beckons you buy

into the promised sacred memories of tomorrow?

What mutation of species thrives on the suffocation of will,

who bless the innocent to sacred prisons of the flesh,

where long-term pain of born-again ignorance

is sanctified in the form of perpetual lineage?

And who are those who reject such iconoclastic relics of yesterday

and seek rather the oft-missed nature of love,

that which proffers life’s partners as born of fragrances

from bouquets of unpollinated flowers,

visions of untrammeled dreams

and the concertos of atonal memory

tethered to a cloudless ether of joy and innocence?

We ponder and ask…

Is there a romance of life,

a ripple of peace and rest

as storms fade behind us

and nature's wash cleanses the residual wounds of the past?

Does the blue of calm meet the red of passion with cautious beckoning?

Are we but delusional in our praise of the heart's ceaseless trumpeting of yesterday's echoes?

And what of this creature comfort that oft times is mistaken for love?

Can it be that mind over matter is reality's checkmate for careless games of infatuation,

where the romance of love proves to be only dreams mistaken for consciousness

bringing aloneness begging of forgiveness?

For truth be told,

romance is life,

a lyrical perspective

allowing the music of winged intonations and soulful protocols

to harmonize with the fragrance of smiles that permeates the symphony of living,

where the clouds release sunlight,

storms arrest our complacency,

and cascades of past emotions take their rightful place

in the now of yesterday,

the present of today,

and the magic of tomorrow.

What is romance

if not all of nature,

all of the imagination,

and forever the rapture of love

in all its wanting,

in all its impatience,

in all its unknowns,

and forever in all its undiscovered self-perpetuating conundrums.

But, oh how sweet the enigma of its reality.